A Betrayal in Winter (lpq-2) (3 page)

once-father's hand trembled as if uneased by the presence of genuine

feeling. He leaned hack into his black lacquer seat and motioned for a

servant to bring him a bowl of tea. At the front of the temple, the

priest chanted on.

When the last word was sung, the last chime struck, bearers came and

lifted her husband's body. The slow procession began, moving through the

streets to the pealing of hand bells and the wailing of flutes. In the

central square, the pyre was ready-great logs of pine stinking of oil

and within them a bed of hard, hot-burning coal from the mines. Biitrah

was lifted onto it and a shroud of tight metal links placed over him to

hide the sight when his skin peeled from his noble bones. It was her

place now to step forward and begin the conflagration. She moved slowly.

All eyes were on her, and she knew what they were thinking. Poor woman,

to have been left alone. Shallow sympathies that would have been

extended as readily to the wives of the Khai Machi's other sons, had

their men been under the metal blanket. And in those voices she heard

also the excitement, dread, and anticipation that these bloody paroxysms

carried. When the empty, insincere words of comfort were said, in the

same breath they would move on to speculations. Both of Biitrah's

brothers had vanished. Danat, it was said, had gone to the mountains

where he had a secret force at the ready, or to Lachi in the south to

gather allies, or to ruined Saraykeht to hire mercenaries, or to the

Dai-kvo to seek the aid of the poets and the andat. Or he was in the

temple, gathering his strength, or he was cowering in the basement of a

low town comfort house, too afraid to come to the streets. And every

story they told of him, they also told of Kaiin.

It had begun. At long last, after years of waiting, one of the men who

might one day be Khai Machi had made his move. The city waited for the

drama to unfold. This pyre was only the opening for them, the first

notes of some new song that would make this seem to be about something

honorable, comprehensible, and right.

Hiami took a pose of thanks and accepted a lit torch from the

firekeeper. She stepped to the oil-soaked wood. A dove fluttered past

her, landed briefly on her husband's chest, and then flew away again.

She felt herself smile to see it go. She touched the flame to the small

kindling and stepped back as the fire took. She waited there as long as

tradition required and then went back to the Second Palace. Let the

others watch the ashes. "Their song might be starting, but hers here had

ended.

Her servant girl was waiting for her at the entrance of the palace's

great hall. She held a pose of welcome that suggested there was some

news waiting for her. Hiami was tempted to ignore the nuance, to walk

through to her chambers and her fire and bed and the knotwork scarf that

was now nearly finished. But there were tear-streaks on the girl's

cheeks, and who was Hiami, after all, to treat a suffering child

unkindly? She stopped and took a pose that accepted the welcome before

shifting to one of query.

"Idaan Machi," the servant girl said. "She is waiting for you in the

summer garden."

Hiami shifted to a pose of thanks, straightened her sleeves, and walked

quietly down the palace halls. The sliding stone doors to the garden

were open, a breeze too cold to be comfortable moving through the hall.

And there, by an empty fountain surrounded by bare-limbed cherry trees,

sat her once-sister. If her formal robes were not the pale of mourning,

her countenance contradicted them: reddened eyes, paint and powder

washed away. She was a plain enough woman without them, and Hiami felt

sorry for her. It was one thing to expect the violence. It was another

to see it done.

She stepped forward, her hands in a pose of greeting. Idaan started to

her feet as if she'd been caught doing something illicit, but then she

took an answering pose. Hiami sat on the fountain's stone lip, and Idaan

lowered herself, sitting on the ground at her feet as a child might.

"Your things are packed," Idaan said.

"Yes. I'll leave tomorrow. It's weeks to "Ian-Sadar. It won't be so

hard, I think. One of my daughters is married there, and my brother is a

decent man. They'll treat me well while I make arrangements for my own

apartments."

"It isn't fair," Idaan said. "They shouldn't force you out like this.

You belong here."

"It's tradition," Hiami said with a pose of surrender. "Fairness has

nothing to do with it. My husband is dead. I will return to my father's

house, whoever's actually sitting in his chair these days."

"If you were a merchant, no one would require anything like that of you.

You could go where you pleased, and do what you wanted."

"True, but I'm not, am I? I was born to the utkhaiem. You were horn to a

Khai."

"And women," Idaan said. Hiami was surprised by the venom in the word.

"We were born women, so we'll never even have the freedoms our brothers do."

Hiami laughed. She couldn't help herself, it was all so ridiculous. She

took her once-sister's hand and leaned forward until their foreheads

almost touched. Idaan's tear-red eyes shifted to meet her gaze.

"I don't think the men in our families consider themselves unconstrained

by history," she said, and Idaan's expression twisted with chagrin.

"I wasn't thinking," she said. "I didn't mean that ... Gods ... I'm

sorry, Hiami-kya. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry ..."

Hiami opened her arms, and the girl fell into them, weeping. Hiami

rocked her slowly, cooing into her ear and stroking her hair as if she

were comforting a babe. And as she did, she looked around the gardens.

This would be the last time she saw them. "Thin tendrils of green were

rising from the soil. The trees were bare, but their bark had an

undertone of green. Soon it would be warm enough to turn on the fountains.

She felt her sorrow settle deep, an almost physical sensation. She

understood the tears of the young that were even now soaking her robes

at the shoulder. She would come to understand the tears of age in time.

They would be keeping her company. There was no need to hurry.

At length, Idaan's sobs grew shallower and less frequent. The girl

pulled back, smiling sheepishly and wiping her eyes with the back of her

hand.

"I hadn't thought it would be this had," Idaan said softly. "I knew it

would be hard, but this is ... How did they do it?"

"Who, dear?"

"All of them. All through the generations. How did they bring themselves

to kill each other?"

"I think," Hiami said, her words seeming to come from the new sorrow

within her and not from the self she had known, "that in order to become

one of the Khaiem, you have to stop being able to love. So perhaps

Biitrah's tragedy isn't the worst that could have happened."

Idaan hadn't followed the thought. She took a pose of query.

"Winning this game may be worse than losing it, at least for the sort of

man he was. He loved the world too much. Seeing that love taken from him

would have been had. Seeing him carry the deaths of his brothers with

him ... and he wouldn't have been able to go slogging through the mines.

He would have hated that. He would have been a very poor Khai Maehi."

"I don't think I love the world that way," Idaan said.

"You don't, Idaan-kya," Hiami said. "And just now I don't either. But I

will try to. I will try to love things the way he did."

They sat a while longer, speaking of things less treacherous. In the

end, they parted as if it were just another absence before them, as if

there would be another meeting on another day. A more appropriate

farewell would have ended with them both in tears again.

The leave-taking ceremony before the Khai was more formal, but the

emptiness of it kept it from unbalancing her composure. He sent her back

to her family with gifts and letters of gratitude, and assured her that

she would always have a place in his heart so long as it beat. Only when

he enjoined her not to think ill of her fallen husband for his weakness

did her sorrow threaten to shift to rage, but she held it down. They

were only words, spoken at all such events. They were no more about

Biitrah than the protestations of loyalty she now recited were about

this hollow-hearted man in his black lacquer seat.

After the ceremony, she went around the palaces, conducting more

personal farewells with the people whom she'd come to know and care for

in Nlachi, and just as dark fell, she even slipped out into the streets

of the city to press a few lengths of silver or small jewelry into the

hands of a select few friends who were not of the utkhaiem. There were

tears and insincere promises to follow her or to one day bring her hack.

Hiam] accepted all these little sorrows with perfect grace. Little

sorrows were, after all, only little.

She lay sleepless that last night in the bed that had seen all her

nights since she had first come to the north, that had borne the doubled

weight of her and her husband, witnessed the birth of their children and

her present mourning, and she tried to think kindly of the bed, the

palace, the city and its people. She set her teeth against her tears and

tried to love the world. In the morning, she would take a flatboat down

the 'Fidat, slaves and servants to carry her things, and leave behind

forever the bed of the Second Palace where people did everything but die

gently and old in their sleep.

Maati took a pose that requested clarification. In another context, it

would have risked annoying the messenger, but this time the servant of

the Dai-kvo seemed to be expecting a certain level of disbelief. Without

hesitation, he repeated his words.

"The Dai-kvo requests Maati Vaupathai come immediately to his private

chambers."

It was widely understood in the shining village of the Dai-kvo that

Maati Vaupathai was, if not a failure, certainly an embarrassment. Over

the years he had spent in the writing rooms and lecture halls, walking

the broad, clean streets, and huddled with others around the kilns of

the firekeepers, Maati had grown used to the fact that he would never be

entirely accepted by those who surrounded him; it had been eight years

since the Dai-kvo had deigned to speak to him directly. Maati closed the

brown leather book he had been studying and slipped it into his sleeve.

He took a pose that accepted the message and announced his readiness.

The white-robed messenger turned smartly and led the way.

The village that was home to the [)a]-kvo and the poets was always

beautiful. Now in the middle spring, flowers and ivies scented the air

and threatened to overflow the well-tended gardens and planters, but no

stray grass rose between the paving stones. The gentle choir of wind

chimes filled the air. The high, thin waterfall that fell beside the

palaces shone silver, and the towers and garrets-carved from the

mountain face itself-were unstained even by the birds that roosted in

the eaves. Men spent lifetimes, Nlaati knew, keeping the village

immaculate and as impressive as a Khai on his scat. The village and

palaces seemed as grand as the great bowl of sky above them. His years

living among the men of the village-only men, no women were

permitted-had never entirely robbed Nlaati of his awe at the place. He

struggled now to hold himself tall, to appear as calm and self-possessed

as a man summoned to the Dai-kvo regularly. As he passed through the

archways that led to the palace, he saw several messengers and more than

a few of the brown-robed poets pause to look at him.

He was not the only one who found his presence there strange.

The servant led him through the private gardens to the modest apartments

of the most powerful man in the world. Maati recalled the last time he

had been there-the insults and recriminations, the Daikvo's scorching

sarcasm, and his own certainty and pride crumbling around him like sugar

castles left out in the rain. Maati shook himself. There was no reason

for the I)ai-kvo to have called him back to repeat the indignities of

the past.

There are always the indignities of the future, the soft voice that had

become Maati's muse said from a corner of his mind. Never assume you can

survive the future because you've survived the past. Everyone thinks

that, and they've all been wrong eventually.

The servant stopped before the elm-and-oak-inlaid door that led, Maati

remembered, to a meeting chamber. He scratched it twice to announce

them, then opened the door and motioned Maati in. Maati breathed deeply